Robin James
@robinjames.bsky.social
5K followers 1.1K following 3.6K posts
editor & independent scholar. Pop music, gender, philosophy. Books: GOOD VIBES ONLY; THE FUTURE OF ROCK & ROLL; THE SONIC EPISTEME; RESILIENCE & MELANCHOLY. Bylines Jezebel, Guardian, LARB, Real Life, etc. no views, just vibes. its-her-factory.com
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Robin James
olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
repost this if an editor has ever saved you from yourself
blipstress.bsky.social
An actual hot take: Too many authors are afraid of editors watering down their voice or whatever and not afraid enough of editors letting you put any old slop on the page.
robinjames.bsky.social
Ordinary slop is different from a mass-produced commodity because it produces a different kind of flattening - not the normalizing homogenization of a mass or population, but the evacuation of shared feeling and experience into privatized self-management (which it shares w right wing AI slop)
robinjames.bsky.social
The one issue I could see is managing rights and permissions. I would think someone I. The library could help with this. But thats also part of the cost (and service printers provide) in putting together a course pack.
robinjames.bsky.social
Overheard in the office restroom: young millennial women dissing the new TS album
robinjames.bsky.social
Liz Pelly’s book comes to mind
robinjames.bsky.social
Just as one of the functions of AI is to break social connections & fabric, the summer of blah is about breaking the ‘distribution of the sensible,’ publics called into existence through art; just privatization all the way down
robinjames.bsky.social
Interesting that the summer of blah came after the summer where three women, each w very distinctive sounds, had a number of bangers and drove The Discourse
robinjames.bsky.social
The right has AI slop, the reactionary center has “Ordinary,” and the rest of us are listening to tons of new and weird stuff that has about as much success breaking through the mainstream as left ideas have of getting covered in mainstream media
robinjames.bsky.social
The right has AI slop, the reactionary center has “Ordinary,” and the rest of us are listening to tons of new and weird stuff that has about as much success breaking through the mainstream as left ideas have of getting covered in mainstream media
robinjames.bsky.social
In the 10 years since I wrote this, the “reactionary center” represented by “Hello” is still here but musically it’s been evacuated of anything good or catchy enough to paper over its ideological status. It may not be AI but it’s still kinda slop.

thenewinquiry.com/hello-from-t...
Hello From the Same Side
Adele’s single is the musical equivalent of the desire for experiential homogeneity that Trump satisfies.
thenewinquiry.com
robinjames.bsky.social
I remember back in the late 90s and aughts when institutions like Hypatia and the California Roundtable on Philosophy and Race really felt like "well its all us weirdos here we better stick together bc there's nowhere else for us in the field"
robinjames.bsky.social
Tbh I don’t get the whole (mostly British) wing of haunty-Marxists, even wrote a thing about it in this months The Wire
robinjames.bsky.social
i think what I'm saying is enshittification has hit corporate pop in a very legible way so the biggest stuff rn is v bland even while tons of weird bangers bubble just underneath
robinjames.bsky.social
feels like the "why no song of the summer this year?' and the "why did TS's album flop?" questions are related

1. the chaotic political/econ context & all the noise it makes in ppl's lives puts their attn elsewhere
2. weird music is doing fine (Kpop DH), but gulf grows btw it & bland chart toppers
robinjames.bsky.social
it's exceptionally brutal out there rn, worst humanities job market possibly ever, and I saw 08 and COVID.
robinjames.bsky.social
yep, which is basically 3k words
robinjames.bsky.social
Starting in the late 90s, American continental philosophers have been trained a a pluralists who work across gender studies, Black studies, Lat Am studies, etc. this equips us better than our British counterparts to analyze pop culture.
Reposted by Robin James
robinjames.bsky.social
This issue features me on why I've never found the concept of hauntology that useful and the differences between American and British continental philosophy
thewiremagazine.bsky.social
The Wire 501 is out now!

Featuring claire rousay on the cover, plus Giorno Poetry Systems, Rafael Toral, Lord Spikeheart’s Invisible Jukebox, Yusuf Mumin, Susu Laroche, and much, much more.

Available to buy:
www.thewire.co.uk/shop/
robinjames.bsky.social
The tl:dr is: maybe when talking about Black Atlantic popular music James Snead not Jacques Derrida is the theorist to look to esp when it comes to issues of repetition and the new
robinjames.bsky.social
Introductions to a second edition of a book! Those tend to be more explicitly meta.
robinjames.bsky.social
her focus on interpersonal conflict suggests she literally can't write a song about ideas or use ideas to generate tension/interest (which is kind of what the whole Charli/Lorde thing was? "we worked thru our interpersonal conflict and had IDEAS")
robinjames.bsky.social
This issue features me on why I've never found the concept of hauntology that useful and the differences between American and British continental philosophy
thewiremagazine.bsky.social
The Wire 501 is out now!

Featuring claire rousay on the cover, plus Giorno Poetry Systems, Rafael Toral, Lord Spikeheart’s Invisible Jukebox, Yusuf Mumin, Susu Laroche, and much, much more.

Available to buy:
www.thewire.co.uk/shop/
robinjames.bsky.social
Feels kinda like a big apocalyptic spectacle here in the US what better soundtrack for our New World Order etc etc
robinjames.bsky.social
Btw the new TS flopping, the new NIN soundtrack, and this…psytrance song, I predict critical taste is taking a hard turn toward…industrial?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctt6...
Danny L Harle - Azimuth (feat. Caroline Polachek)
YouTube video by Danny L Harle
www.youtube.com